


There's No Plan

by freyjawriter24



Series: Hozier's Good Omens [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: First Kiss, Good Omens fic based on a Hozier song, M/M, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Post-Scene: The Ritz (Good Omens), no plan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23237308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freyjawriter24/pseuds/freyjawriter24
Summary: They had arrived at the airbase with little plan of their own. But really, it was Aziraphale’s realisation that changed the universe. Because it turned out that Heaven and Hell didn’t really know the plan either.Airbase and post-Ritz fic inspired by Hozier’s song No Plan.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Hozier's Good Omens [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1507292
Comments: 19
Kudos: 85





	There's No Plan

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by Hozier’s song [No Plan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXq_J29V5Io). It is written to be accompanied by this song, so please do listen to it before and/or during and/or after reading.

It was like suddenly waking up from a long, deep sleep into brisk morning air and bright sunlight. Or, at least, that was how Aziraphale – who had never slept a day in his over-6,000-year life – might have described it.

“It’s the Great Plan.”

But, to push the analogy further (as that angel is wont to do), it was more than that. It was like waking up and being confronted with the cold reality of the world, yes, but also with the realisation, for the first time, that there is someone there beside you in the bed. And perhaps they have been awake for a while now, just enjoying spending the time beside you, or perhaps they were never even asleep at all, but either way they were just waiting for you to wake up, and now that you are they’re there to support you, to keep you warm in this strange new world of the wakened people, to be there when you need them and to show you that you’re not alone.

(Crowley might roll his eyes at all this and make a Matrix reference, which Aziraphale wouldn’t get. But the demon would still smile, small and secretive, at his angel’s description – because really, how could he not? He’s the other one in the bed.)

_~~I’ll be your man if you got love to get done.~~ _

“Adam. When all this is over, you’re going to get to rule the world. Don’t you want to rule the world?”

It was also rather like waking up having just run headlong into a brick wall. Head throbbing with sudden understanding, wincing of the pain of it all, genuinely gobsmacked you didn’t see it sooner.

Both Aziraphale and Crowley might have described it like that.

“I’ve got all the world I want.”

They were at the end of it all. The eleven-year-old Antichrist and his friends had just banished the four horsepersons, and now the archangel Gabriel and Prince of Hell Beelzebub were trying to convince a small, stubborn child to do something he’d already made his mind up not to. You could tell they hadn’t spent much time on Earth.

“Well you can’t just refuse to be who you are,” Gabriel said, obviously astounded. “Your birth, your destiny, they’re part of the Great Plan!”

That’s when it hit.

“Um, ahem, yeah, excuse me,” Aziraphale cut in, stepping forwards to be at Adam’s side. “Um.”

Crowley looked on, astonished, as the angel kept talking. “You-you keep talking about the ‘Great Plan’...”

“Aziraphale, maybe you should just keep your mouth shut.”

Gabriel, possibly for the first time ever, was ignored. “One thing I’m not clear on. Is that the _Ineffable_ Plan?”

Aziraphale stood firm, a soldier’s spine behind his theorist’s mouth. Crowley stared.

_My heart is thrilled by the still of your hand._  
_It's how I know now that you understand._

They’d had theological discussions before, of course. Intense philosophical ones, too, as well as arguments over petty things like what exactly constituted a duck. Crowley knew, intimately, the abilities of Aziraphale’s mind. He knew him to be the smartest being he’d ever come across – and he’d met Einstein, Turing, Lovelace, all the people humans held up as the ‘greatest minds’. To Crowley, none of them could hold a candle to the angel – but then, they were several thousand years of knowledge and experience behind, to be fair.

What Crowley hadn’t quite appreciated, though, was that in all of these debates, Aziraphale was being hindered by his reliance on Heaven’s doctrines as absolute truth. There were multiple times when, predictably, the angel had shut down the conversation with ‘ineffable’ or ‘shouldn’t speculate’ or ‘the Great Plan’.

But now... now, those shackles were off. He was allowed to question, for the first time ever, what Heaven had told him for his entire existence. Upstairs had been wrong about Crowley, were constrictive on things that Aziraphale loved and knew to not be sinful, and now they had lost sight of what should have been their main aim; keeping the humans safe. And that had broken the seal. Suddenly the angel’s vast intellect was able to tackle subjects he’d previously denied himself, and Heaven and Hell were about to feel the full force of it.

Beelzebub was talking about the world ending in fire and flame, but Gabriel was looking tense and... confused.

“Yes, yes, that sounds like the Great Plan,” Aziraphale said, accepting it placidly. But then Crowley saw a flicker of something in his face, saw the steadying of himself in the tightening of his hands in front of him, and recognised the tone of what would come next. “Just wondering – is that the _Ineffable_ Plan as well?”

Beelzebub frowned. Gabriel looked pained, like it was causing him actual effort to think. Crowley just stared, realisation slowly sinking in.

“Well, they’re the same thing!” Gabriel said in a voice that convinced precisely nobody.

“You don’t know...” Crowley breathed.

_There’s no plan._

And then he understood it all, realised the power of Aziraphale’s philosophical position, and stepped up to join him.

“It’d be a pity,” he said, continuing Aziraphale’s argument, amazed to be on the same side as him after all this time, “if you thought you were doing what the Great Plan said, but you were actually going directly against God’s Ineffable Plan.”

The archangel and the Prince of Hell tried to argue, but came up with nothing solid. _See, here’s the problem,_ Crowley thought. _You sit up there, you sit down there, you never just talk, you never discuss ideas, you never compare notes or argue over petty things. You don’t know how any of this works. You can’t even compete in a simple debate. And I’ve got the best of them on my team. There’s no way you can win this._

“God does not play games with the universe,” Gabriel said, offering faux gravitas, grasping at straws.

“Where have you been?” Crowley said, and Aziraphale didn’t even shush his flippant quip. They looked at each other, understanding flitting between them, and then they watched as the representatives of Heaven and Hell moved away to talk privately.

Gabriel and Beelzebub didn’t even try to come up with a response. They just accepted their fate, moaned about it, and threw the blame squarely back at the misfits on the tarmac, who smiled and waved.

It was Satan that posed the real problem.

The ground shook, and not in the way an earthquake did. They’d experienced that a handful of times over the millennia – in Japan, in India, twice in San Salvador, centuries apart, and one particularly memorable occasion in San Francisco. Those were Earthly tremors, caused by fault lines, the shifting of the tectonic plates. This felt different, in a way that only celestials could identify, but could hardly put words to.

Crowley was on his knees, body limp with exhaustion and defeat. “Right,” he said. “That was that. It was nice knowing you.”

Aziraphale stared down at him, a familiar look of denial on his face. He shook his head. “We can’t give up now.”

“This is Satan himself. It isn’t about Armageddon, this is personal.” He wanted to scream, so he did. “We are FUCKED.”

The American airbase in Oxfordshire shook again, the open countryside around it as still and undisturbed as it always was. The humans stumbled around, struggling to stay on their feet, clinging to one another for support. There was a noise of something shifting below the Earth – in a much larger sense than usually meant – and the ground shuddered again and again and again.

Aziraphale turned around, spotted the sword – _his_ sword, the one he hadn’t seen in six thousand years – and picked it up. He held it loosely in his hand, with an unconscious but practiced control, and turned to face Crowley.

The angel looked desperate, almost hopeless but refusing to give in. He always was stubborn when he wanted to be. “Come up with _something_ , or...”

The sword was raised. _A threat?_ Aziraphale looked at it, as if realising its existence again, as if confused as to why it was there. He looked at the demon on the floor, who stared between the holy blade – unlit, but still dangerous – and the angel who was his best friend, horrified shock etched into his face.

Aziraphale dropped his arm.

_My heart is thrilled by the still of your hand._

“Or I’ll never talk to you again.”

_It's how I know now that you understand._

Crowley realised, like a blow to the stomach, how true that sentence would be, whether or not Aziraphale had a choice in it. _Do something. Anything. Now._

He turned, and growled, and dragged up the biggest miracle he possibly could from the bottom of whatever hellish reservoir of power served him.

_Click._

Release. Relief. Relax.

The feeling of air through your feathers. The feeling of stretching limbs that had been constrained for far too long. The feeling of stable ground beneath your feet. The feeling of calm, peace, time. Or lack of time. Absence of it. No need of it.

Wherever they were was outside of everything else, completely and utterly. For a second, watching Aziraphale stretch his wings, Crowley wondered if they could stay here for ever. How long could he let this moment last?

_How big the hourglass, how deep the sand?_  
_I shouldn't hope to know, but here I stand._

But no. They couldn’t. There was a whole universe out there that needed saving.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses.

They didn’t say much to Adam, in that moment beyond. But what they did give him was the knowledge that he was right, he was human, he was exactly what he needed to be. They gave him hope, and they gave him the idea for the simplest way to defeat that oldest of nightmares, that most ancient of scary bedtime stories.

Adam, the Antichrist, the adopted child of two unaware human parents, told Satan himself the difference between a father and a dad, and vanished the devil into nothing, replaced only by an old, rattling little car, and an inexplicably angry Mr Young.

Everything felt rather surreal, after that.

The humans went home. There was a conversation on a bench. A bus ride. An arrival at a flat with a dissolved demon on the floor. A clean-up. Another conversation. A realisation. A testing-out. Relief. Hope. Bravery.

There was a demon who went to Heaven, and an angel who went to Hell. There was defiance, and there was victory.

And then there was a celebration at the Ritz.

_The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun._

“Oh, that really was scrumptious,” the angel said, and Crowley smiled freely at him. “Do you know, I think that’s the best example of that dish I have ever tasted.”

“You always say that here, angel,” Crowley said, teasing but indulgent. “It is the Ritz, after all.”

“Yes, but I think it’s more than that, this time,” Aziraphale said, in a tone that suggested consideration but without even the hint of a frown on his face. “I think it’s that... everything is new. Unexpected. Unpromised. Does that... make sense?”

Crowley tilted his head slightly to one side, watching as the soft face turned to look earnestly at him. “Yes, angel, it does. We didn’t expect to ever be able to do this again. To do anything together again. Makes sense that it would seem special.”

Aziraphale beamed at him and gave a happy little wiggle in his chair. “Should we order dessert?”

Another course later, and what was probably another few hours of chatting, and the next lot of diners began to filter in through the doors.

“Oh, gosh, we seem to have spent the whole day here.”

Crowley raised his eyebrows as if to seem surprised at that fact, but the soft, indulgent smile that had curled his mouth all afternoon gave him away.

Aziraphale patted at his mouth with a napkin, not that there was anything to wipe off, and then laid it carefully on the table next to the two empty plates.

“What would you like to do now, angel?”

There was a pause, as Aziraphale seemed to realise the depth of that question. There was... so much they could do. Anything, if they wanted. There were no rules anymore. He could do as he liked. There was so much potential in what he could give as a response.

“Well, my dear, I... I don’t know.”

He looked at Crowley, and for a second the glittering lights of the Ritz hit his glasses just right, so that Aziraphale could see the fondness in the yellow eyes beneath.

“Anything you want, angel,” the demon said softly. “Anything at all.”

Aziraphale stared at him for a moment. And then another. Then he flicked his gaze away and looked downwards, at his hands suddenly nestled and quietly fidgeting in his lap.

“I... I’d like to watch the sunset. If you don’t mind.”

If Crowley recognised any potentially romantic connotations to that suggestion, he showed no sign of it. “Course, angel. Where would you recommend?”

“Well, I, ah...” Aziraphale frowned for a second, like he was thinking – or, perhaps, summing up the courage to say the words. “I can’t say I’ve used it much, but I imagine the view from the roof of the bookshop would be...” He seemed to rethink his words, dismiss the plan before he’d even fully voiced it. “No, I expect it would be rather terrible, actually, that’s a rather silly idea. We should just...”

“Aziraphale.” The demon’s voice was heart-achingly gentle. “If you want to watch it from the roof, let’s watch it from the roof.”

The angel’s face creased into that look of utter gratefulness, the one Crowley had first seen on the Wall, the one he’d been graced with after oysters, after crepes, after miracling Hamlet popular, after miracling Aziraphale’s coat clean. It was an expression that made Crowley feel like he’d just offered Aziraphale the whole universe on a platter, for him and him alone. (Which, come to think of it... Nah, not quite. But close.)

They went back to the bookshop. Aziraphale looked around as he walked in, clocking little changes immediately and clearly itching to check everything, but he led the way to the back without hesitation.

There was a door, mostly hidden by some well-placed shelves and several stacks of books on the floor. Crowley had noticed it before, knew that it had been there since the beginning of the shop’s days, but he’d never been through.

Aziraphale opened it, and Crowley followed him up the little set of stairs beyond, hardly daring breathe. At the top there were doors to both sides, one half-open and showing a sliver of the bookshop’s balcony, the other closed and marked ‘Private’ in the same hand-painted way the sign outside was done. The angel chose neither of those, opting instead for the tightly-twisting spiral of wooden stairs straight ahead.

At the top was another door, and then the open air.

Aziraphale heard the demon’s involuntary intake of breath, and looked at him sharply, uncertainty creased into his forehead. But just a glance at Crowley’s expression relaxed him, and a small smile crept its way onto his lips. “I do like it up here. I just sometimes forget it exists, is all.”

Crowley couldn’t speak for a second. When he did, the first few syllables were garbled, eventually morphing their way into “it’s _beautiful_ , angel.”

The demon might have expected an excited wiggle at that, the kind of motion that Aziraphale was inclined to give when showing off something he was genuinely pleased by and was happy that Crowley also liked. What happened instead was that Aziraphale reached up and straightened his bow tie.

“Well, it’s – it’s not really much of anything, I just...”

Crowley stepped forwards, away from the haven of the bookshop’s upstairs doorway, and walked to the railed edge of the roof, leaning against it to look down at the street below. After a moment, Aziraphale joined him.

“You can see all sorts from up here, angel. Look at that view! We’re not that high, but this is stunning. And this has been here the whole time?”

With the question, Crowley finally looked back at Aziraphale, and paused at the expression he saw.

“Everything okay, angel?”

“Oh, yes. Perfectly fine.” The ethereal being wasn’t looking at the occult one, his eyes instead trained loosely on the horizon line, where the sun was already beginning to turn the sky a beautiful shade of pink. Aziraphale’s hands were fidgeting with each other, nervously twining fingers round and round – none of the calm stillness from the airbase yesterday.

“Sure?” Crowley asked, peering with concern over the top of his sunglasses.

“Yes, I –”

The angel had made as if to glance up at Crowley then turn away, but he seemed to have gotten stuck on the demon’s uncovered eyes. Aziraphale fumbled and then stopped, staring for just a beat too long. Crowley’s cheeks felt suddenly very warm.

Aziraphale broke the moment, bustling off to another part of the roof. “Would you like tea? Or coffee? I don’t have much else up here, I’d have to go back downstairs if you want anything stronger...”

“Angel, you have a whole tea set up _here_?”

Crowley gaped as Aziraphale opened up a large weather-proof storage box and produced two mugs, some tea bags, and a biscuit selection.

“Well, you know, it’s more convenient to have it to hand. And it’s not a tea _set_ , Crowley, just a kettle and some mugs.”

The demon came over to investigate, and found a filled kettle already bubbling away inside the box, apparently plugged into the inside of the box itself for power. Crowley turned to look at the angel in awe, before realising he was setting out two garden chairs in the middle of the roof, their backs to the bookshop’s large glass dome, in prime viewing position for the impending sunset.

“ _Angel_ , I...” Crowley didn’t know what to say.

Aziraphale finished straightening out the cushions on the seats – one green on black, one blue on cream – and looked up, worry again creasing lines into his forehead. _Is it too much?_ he seemed to be asking.

 _Not at all,_ Crowley wanted to say, so he did. “This is brilliant. Really.”

The angel’s face burst into that brilliant beaming smile, and the demon had to steel himself a little to prevent from doing something ridiculous like fainting.

“Oh, good,” Aziraphale said, moving back over to the storage box just as the kettle began to whistle time.

A minute or so later, they were both installed on their colour-coded garden chairs, mugs of tea in hand (and a biscuit, in Aziraphale’s case). They sat back, tilting their faces to the sky, watching as the sun set on their part of London, their part of the universe.

“We helped save this,” the demon murmured to the orange-painted clouds.

“Yes, my dear. We did.”

They were close enough that if their hands hadn’t been full of tea and custard cream, they might have reached out to one another, as they had done last night, on the bus. But that had been an emotional moment, one of uncertainty and relief and terror all at once. Now there was just peacefulness, and no need for an anchor.

Still, each privately thought about offering the contact anyway, and what that might mean. Neither did.

_My heart is thrilled by the still of your hand._

Eventually, the colour faded from the horizon, orange and pink drifting into pale yellow and the remainder of the day’s clear blue, night creeping in from behind the pair of celestials, bringing with it the first scattering of stars. Aziraphale took the mugs and miracled them clean, tucking them back into the roof’s storage box beside the kettle and biscuit tin. Crowley stood and folded the chairs, and Aziraphale hid them away again, beneath an overhang where they’d be protected from the rain.

The demon held the door open, and followed the angel back down the stairs – spiral first, then pause, then main steps. Crowley tried not to look at the ‘Private’ sign as they went past, tried not to wonder what lay beyond.

They ended up, of course, in the back room with a wineglass each. The street outside was still visible through the bookshop, the summer evening finally fading into night as the roads began to empty of people.

_Sit in and watch the sunlight fade,_  
_Honey, enjoy, it's gettin' late._

“Crowley,” the angel said with a questioning voice, and then bit his lip.

The demon looked at him, patiently offering time for Aziraphale to proceed. The angel was sat across from him, in his usual wingback chair while Crowley sprawled on the sofa – although he was more slumped today than sprawled, taking up a little less room on the cushions, just in case.

Crowley sipped his wine. Then he reached up, casually but deliberately, and removed the sunglasses from his face.

The yellow snake eyes flashed in the comfortable dimness of the bookshop. A pair of pale blues met them, and held for a long while, before flitting away.

Aziraphale drank, a sip that turned into him downing the lot, and then he reached for the open bottle and emptied it into his glass.

“Do you think we’re still... an angel and a demon?”

Crowley frowned for a second at the question. “Technically speaking, yes,” he said. “I don’t think we get to keep the titles. You’re probably not a Principality anymore. But from a literal, physical standpoint... Yeah, I think so.”

“Mmm.”

Aziraphale took another gulp of red, and Crowley did the same, sipping thoughtfully at his drink.

The road outside grew quieter. The streetlamps blocked any view of the stars from here, even if there was more than a tiny patch of sky visible from this angle and street level. Crowley wondered if he should suggest they go up to the roof again, or perhaps out into the open countryside somewhere, to stargaze for a while. He hadn’t done that in years.

“Would you like some more?” Aziraphale said, nodding towards Crowley’s rapidly-emptying glass and the already-empty wine bottle.

“Uh, sure.” He grinned, trying to seem demonic. “You trying to get me drunk, angel?”

Aziraphale shot him a withering look, then stood, moved off to retrieve some more wine, and then came and sat back down.

On the sofa.

Next to Crowley.

The demon took a slow, careful breath. _Studied calm._ He didn’t move for a second, letting the angel get comfortable, and then oh-so-casually took a sip from his almost-empty glass.

Aziraphale refilled his own, then offered the bottle in Crowley’s direction. The demon nodded, but before he could take it, the angel had leaned closer and was refilling Crowley’s glass himself. The demon stopped breathing entirely.

“I was thinking,” Aziraphale said as he withdrew the bottle and put it safely aside, just within reach. “We should go abroad somewhere, see the sights again. We don’t need to _do_ anything anymore, after all, and I should like... I’d like to see what we helped save.”

Crowley couldn’t do anything but nod.

“I think I’d like to go to Egypt,” the angel continued, eyes trained on the liquid in his glass. “It feels like I haven’t been for centuries, and I’d like to see the Pyramids again. The Sphinx.” He paused to take a sip. “The desert offers a beautiful view of the galaxy, too.”

The demon made some vague, consonant-riddled noise of agreement.

“You could... show it to me. If you’d like.”

Crowley swallowed. “Yeah, yes, that sounds... wonderful, angel. Really, really great.”

“Oh, _good_.” There it was again, that smile of a thousand suns. Crowley had helped build nebulas, had seen the first supernova explode across space, and he’d _never_ seen anything so bright.

Aziraphale put down his wineglass and adjusted his position in his seat. Crowley didn’t have his sunglasses on anymore to hide where he was looking, but from watching out of the corner of his eye, he was sure the angel had shifted infinitesimally _towards_ him. The demon swallowed again.

“I do like spending time with you, my dear,” Aziraphale said, continuing his previous thought.

“Me too, angel –” Crowley began, but the other celestial was ploughing on, speaking as if to the hands fluttering in his lap, and the demon shut up instantly.

“– and I’d like to _more_ , as much as... Well, I’m not suggesting that we need to be together every second, I’m more than happy to let you have your own space whenever you need it, but, well, now that we don’t have any reason to _hide_ anything, or otherwise come up with _excuses_ for things – well, I’d rather like to spend quite a lot of my time with you, actually. If – if that would be agreeable.”

Crowley was frozen to the sofa. He couldn’t have spoken, even if he’d wanted to.

“I just mean,” Aziraphale carried on, filling the silence, his face looking pinker by the word, “I enjoy your company, and I’d like to be able to share experiences with you _more_ than we already do – there are so many things that we’ve both done but _separately_ , and I should think it would be nice to have a few more things we can talk about... together.” He trailed off, his cheeks almost red by now.

“Good,” Crowley rasped, his voice somehow breaking out of him. “Sounds nice, angel.”

“I’m glad,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley saw the hesitation in his gesture a second too late to realise what the angel was about to do before he’d done it. A soft, firm hand landed lightly, carefully, oh-so softly and deliberately, on Crowley’s knee. The demon almost choked.

The hand wasn’t there for long, offering a friendly – _friendly? Was that even in the right ballpark?_ – squeeze before retreating back to the safety of the angel’s lap.

“Stars are good,” Crowley said suddenly. He heard himself say it with some surprise, then quickly followed along with his own act. “Yeah. Empty desert. No light pollution. No bloody _any_ Pollution, if Adam and I have it our way. Clear skies. Can see pretty much everything from there.” He was rambling, badly. He didn’t dare look at the angel to see his reaction.

“And, uh, telescopes!” Crowley sprang up from the sofa, moving rapidly away from his own centre of gravity, continuing to talk nonsense. “Clever inventions, very clever. Simple little one, buy it from any decent shop, set it up in your own bedroom – you can see the spot on Jupiter with it, if you know where to look!” The demon dared to dart back towards the angel for just long enough to retrieve his sunglasses and shove them onto his nose, then strode across the shop, nervous energy flowing off him in spades. “They bring the telescopes out with you, yeah, into the desert – on camels, which is, yeah, they’re worse than horses on some days, but the padding’s better, at least – and you can see for miles, everywhere, and the telescopes make you see even further, and...”

Aziraphale had stood up too. The angel was smiling, soft and small, and he’d stepped just a little closer to the demon, watching him stalk aimlessly around the shop.

Crowley paused for a second, mouth still open with unsaid words, then he shook himself and carried on – random words, thoughts, phrases, anything that came into his head to avoid thinking about the one thing he... _No, don’t think about it. Shush. Nothing._

The demon bounced around the interior of the bookshop, marching between shelves, round the little open area under the dome, to the front door, to the door to the stairs, to the phone, and back again. He kept jabbering on as he did so. And somehow, he wound up walking right back up to Aziraphale.

The angel smiled as he caught Crowley in front of him with nothing more than an adoring look. They were stood hardly a metre apart, and Aziraphale closed the distance in one smooth step. His fingers were still now, the nervous fidgeting vanished in the face of the demon’s own anxiety. The occult celestial swallowed again, hard.

_My heart is thrilled by the still of your hand._

“Crowley,” Aziraphale began – so gently, _painfully_ gently.

“And, I, um... Black holes! Clever things, they’re taking pictures of them now, did you know that? Big lab in America, they’re doing smart stuff to make it work because obviously even light gets sucked in, so you can’t take a photo like normal, you know?”

“Crowley,” the angel said again.

“Smart lot, humans. Did you know they’ve figured out that the sun, right, will one day basically swallow up the Earth? And like, eventually, in however many billions of years it takes, the universe will eventually slow down to nothingness? There’s this scientist, Dr Katie Mack –”

“Crowley, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “Would you shut up for just a moment so I can kiss you?”

“Oh... uh...” A series of garbled sounds gurgled in the demon’s throat, ending on one very soft, very terrified-sounding “okay.”

Agreement received, the angel stepped impossibly closer again, the soft fabric of his waistcoat just slightly brushing against Crowley’s stomach. Aziraphale reached up, slowly, gently, giving the demon time to run away if he really wanted to – but nothing could have made Crowley leave right then, not Armageddon or Satan or the Antichrist himself.

The demon nodded as the angel’s hand touched cool metal, and then the sunglasses were gone again, and wide-blown yellow snake eyes stared down into Aziraphale’s. The hand that had removed the glasses settled on the side of Crowley’s neck, and for an instant the demon’s eyes flickered closed, the contact almost too tender to bear. Then he was staring at Aziraphale again, his own hands trembling uselessly at his sides, and he wondered distantly if it was possible to spontaneously shake apart into molecules.

“Angel,” Crowley breathed, and Aziraphale was so close now that the demon felt the angel’s answering breath against his skin.

There’s a point when, if a small child in a science class moves two attracted magnets towards each other, the pull of them both becomes so much that the child cannot hold them apart any longer. Until that point, the magnets may quiver with anticipation, may try vainly to break free, but they are always held back by circumstances, always stuck just out of reach. Push them past that threshold, though, and there is no stopping them.

The principle is not easily replicated amongst living organisms. Luckily, celestials don’t really count as those. And this pair in particular had just crossed their own magnetic point of no return.

The kiss was gentle, and then it was firmer, and then it was urgent, and there were hands in short, spiked up red hair and soft, white-blond curls, and chests pressed together, and a billion billion different sensations scattering across the ether around the pair of them like stars in a desert sky.

They broke apart, panting for air they didn’t need, and the laughter that followed was exhilarated and joyous in a way it had never been before. Then, of course, there were more kisses, more awed grins and adoring looks, and then, right then, was really when their world was saved and changed forever.

The 'I love you' hardly needed to be said, but it was anyway.

_I have loved you for millennia. I didn’t even realise. I’m sorry I could never say it._

_Shush, now. No apologies. I understand. I love you too._

That, finally, was the moment their freedom truly began.

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics in italics are all from No Plan – you can read the lyrics (and their meanings) [here](https://genius.com/Hozier-no-plan-lyrics). Would recommend a look – but beware, you might end up down an internet rabbit hole looking up Dr Katie Mack and the heat death of the universe... Please do it.


End file.
